I have been out of school for a few weeks. My neighbor Brandon who's property is on the backside of my property had told me that he would help me cut some white pines that were leaning in close to my house. About two weeks ago, he came over and we cut each tree one by one as we cleaned up the mess between cuts. Once we had completed this, we hauled the logs over to his sawmill to sit and dry out. We burned a ton of laurel and brush, and during the following days, he started using his trackhoe to clear laurel behind my shop. We had traced a spring back up into my woods that has it's origins above the height of my shop. He uncovered the spring, and then started making pools and waterfalls to help direct the water down to Spice Bottom Creek that runs through the middle of my property. He ended up building eight waterfalls, we put in additional drainage along the side of my shop and we added additional drainage from the gutter downspouts to aid in keeping water away from the shop. We trenched down from the spring and installed waterline that pipes in the super cold, clean water from the spring directly behind my shop. He graded all the hillsides and then I broadcast grass seed. Last night we put some trout in the upper pool. We've spent about two weeks working full days at clearing, burning, and working with what's there to create something really beuatiful.
I spoke with my Dad last night on the phone, I mentioned that we really purchased very little, to make all of this work happen. I kept Brandon supplied in diesel fuel for the trackhoe and dozer, and I purchased a little corrugated pipe and grass seed, but we reused many cast off parts and pieces in order to uncover and rebuild what was already there. The water-pipe, the 5 gallon water reservoir, sections of corrugated pipe, pipe junctions, etc were all reused parts. Often when I'm doing jobs for Brandon, like fixing his door cable, or repairing his water wheel, or his trackhoe, I use parts or scrap metal from other jobs, or things I've taken apart. Brandon's son, Jacob, often has a project where I utilize parts from things most people would have discarded. My Dad mentioned last night that he thinks, that you become a better person for working with what you've got on hand. This struck me and today as I studied, I realized that brokenness is a part of life and sometimes we need to sit with those broken things rather than discard them and replace them with something new immediately. It's easy to turn away from the things that need repair in my life or to simply give up.
In my study, Nehemiah allows himself to be broken and to feel the things he feels in the broken world around himself. BUT he brings these things to God. He names the things specifically and then he laments. There is something about our nature to name the issue and immediately try to fix it rather than to sit with it and let it shape us. We need to sit with our brokenness. Then Nehemiah takes his lament and these things which are broken to God. There is nothing we can throw at God that he can't handle AND God works with broken people. God specifically takes people who have been broken and he uses them in his rebuilding and repairing work in the world.
God steps TOWARD our broken world.
God can hold the things we cannot hold ourselves
God loves us more than we can imagine. I have to think about this in the context of my own children. My children really have no idea how much I love them as they are not able to remember each mundane moment of their life that becomes a seared into my being as my relationship of being a parent to them was being formed from the moment they took their first breath into this world. Similarly, I am sometime blind to the amount of love that God has for me and that he is my ultimate friend.
I need to remember that the things in my life which sometimes feel broken still have the ability to be repaired and rebuilt. Sometimes those things which come out of brokenness can become stronger, more meaningful, and more beautiful than something that simply takes away my frustration, sadness, and grief.
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